The Price of Energy

I collect money. Collect it in a mason jar. Collect coins and bills and hand-written IOUs on Post-Its. I charge five dollars per bad attitude. I began this transactional system when my sons were younger, say eight and ten and two. The price lower back then. A quarter for an eye-roll, a dime for a, But Mom.

A few years ago, I stored this jar, believing that we—my sons and me—had arrived. When I say, Arrived, I mean here, someplace stable. Maybe I mean here, Star, Idaho. What I really mean is that I hoped we’d shifted into peace, which meant our energy stabilized.

I believed that arriving here equaled more time. No. More energy.

In my journal, I map my time.

4:30. Feed pups. Make beds.

5:00. Prance through my garden and pluck basil and sage, fry them crisp, fold them into fluffy omelets.

5:30. Yoga.

6:30. Pre-prep lunch—tuna salad pitas with air-fried sweet potatoes smothered in rosemary, again, from the garden.

7:00. Don’t forget the laundry, the dishes, the bills. Remember: Pre-prep dinner, shave Parmesan by hand for pasta. Oops. Buy Parmesan. While shopping, buy bread and eggs, just in case.

Already noon.

My sons munch their lunches while playing video games. In another room, I unclog the vacuum for the third time this week and tell myself. All this energy expenditure will buy me—

Appreciation?

Approval?

Irreplaceability?

Tell myself, 30 minutes. Certainly I have 30 free minutes.

I brew tea.

Set my writing intention.

I’m lying.

I need an entire week, most likely a month, to polish my manuscript. I need minutes all in a row. And

a pup eats the remote, I hand-wash dishes, store leftovers, mop floors for the seventeenth time. I forget my tea as I return to my manuscript. Technology fails. I troubleshoot. I re-boot the router. I hole in my office for six minutes, re-reading the second line of the sixth stanza of a Golden Shovel and

one of the boys pokes his head in, What is there to eat?

I pretend not to hear him.

It’s 6 pm.

Mom? Mom? Mom, I’m hungry, and

I cave.

Words escape, You need to leave

me alone.

The words are louder, more square than I intended.

The head in the doorway pulls away. Angels gasp. Devils clap. I slump, hold my face. My brain chugs a thousand directions.

My focus is hard-earned, if earned at all.

I count, oneandtwoandthreeandfour…

Boys, come here.

Look, I say and point to my poem.

See? I say, and show them my need to maintain the anaphora phrase AND the end word AND

I’m stuck in the middle of this line on a word that feels wrong in my body, I say.

How can you feel words in your body?

I have no answer.

No.

I know how to answer.

I could ask, Did you feel my shout?

But I can’t.

I don’t.

I’m sorry, I say. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. Though we know this is the nice way of owning yelling.

Let’s make hot cocoa, I say.

The guilt of parenting quilts me, snuffs out my need to create.

After they sleep, 10 pm, give or take, I wander my home like a ghost. I wish I could re-carve our life, turn time back to last week when we watched a movie, ate salted popcorn mixed with Hot Tamales.

What I really want is the ability to leave the dishes dirty.

You piece of shit, I say to me.

I move room to room and kiss their foreheads, say, Forgive me.

Tell them, I’ll try harder.

Ask, Can I have a do-over?

They slumber.

The next day, I find and place the mason jar on our kitchen counter.

Do you remember our energy exchange? I ask.

You used to charge if we argued with you, one of them says.

Do you remember why? I ask.

Because arguing zapped you and you needed more coffee to parent.

Good memory, I say.

Uhm, but we’re not arguing, the other says.

I know, I tell them. Do you remember how I told you, everything requires an exchange of energy? How, in the old days, people traded chickens for flour, or horseshoes for grain. How currency—like money—became a thing and we forgot what it represented. Our energy.

We have to pay you for something now? one of them asks.

No, I say.

I place a five dollar bill in the jar, say, This is for my bad attitude yesterday.

One of them says, Maybe you’ll save enough to hire a housekeeper and that will help your attitude?

Genius, I think.

A pup sprints through, dish towel in her mouth. Another pup chases after. The boys squeal and join in and suddenly, my body,

my body feels the word, and I, too, sprint up the stairs to my office, to my poem, jot the word and plop into my chair, the resistance of stillness fades. I’m here. Me with my body, my body with my words, my body-words with me. I smile a small smile, perhaps a glimmer of achievement.